Abstract
BackgroundAnxiety among women in the perinatal period is common. Assessing the severity of perinatal anxiety will help monitor the progress of the patient through the stages of anxiety and facilitated the treatment. This study assesses the validity and reliability of the “Perinatal Anxiety Screening Scale” (PASS) in the Arabic language.MethodsThe PASS was translated into Arabic. Two hundred seventeen women in the antenatal and postnatal phase participated (92 antenatal and 125 postnatal) answered to PASS, GHQ12, EPDS-10, and DASS-21. Content validity, factor analysis, internal consistency, and test retest reliability were assessed.ResultsContent Validity Index (CVI) and Content Validity Ratio (CVR) were .88 and 0.79; respectively. The scale loaded on four components: acute anxiety, social anxiety, and dissociation; specific fears and trauma; general anxiety and adjustment; and perfectionism and control. Cronbach’s Alpha value for the scale was 0.78 and test retest correlation coefficient was 0.94. PASS significantly correlated with EPDS-10 (rho=0.46), GHQ-12(rho=0.58), the three components of DASS-21 (0.47, 0.50, and 0.43; respectively), and experiencing adverse life events.ConclusionThe Arabic translated version of the PASS showed reasonably adequate validity and reliability and can be used to screen for anxiety disorder among women in the perinatal phase.
Highlights
Anxiety among women in the perinatal period is common
The main aim of this study is to validate the Perinatal Anxiety Scale (PASS) in the Arabic language to increase its usefulness as a screening tool for identifying and tracking problematic antenatal and postnatal anxiety
Participants’ characteristics Overall, 283 women were recruited for this study
Summary
Assessing the severity of perinatal anxiety will help monitor the progress of the patient through the stages of anxiety and facilitated the treatment. Anxiety can negatively affect the behavioral development, emotional and cognitive status of the child [4], and the mother-infant relationship [5, 6]. For this reason, the detection of problematic anxiety via the use of an effective screening tool may be important in screening for risk of problematic anxiety, prevention, early intervention, and treatment in the field of perinatal mental health. Depending on the severity of their symptoms, women can be assigned to maternity and childcare services, counseling services, psychosocial therapy, or to psychiatric hospitalization in severe cases [6]
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